Spirited Back to the Place We First Met
by TheSummerNightingale
Summary: It has been five years since Chihiro left the spirit world, and the memory of it has been wiped from her mind. But when a spirit comes into the human world and drags her back with him, Chihiro is thrust into the world whose spirits claims to know her and need her. But how is she supposed to help a world which she cannot remember?
1. Prologue: 5 Years Ago

**Hey guys! I just watched "Spirited Away" for the second time yesterday, and (unlike the first time) I** _ **loved**_ **it. I loved the magic of the world and I love Chihiro and Haku, and basically the only thing I didn't love so much was that we don't know what happened after Chihiro left the spirit world.**

 **So like many other fans, I'm going to attempt to write my own sequel to this amazing film. I know this can't hope to match up to the original, but this is purely for entertainment purposes and for the sake of my love for Haku :)**

 **Thanks, and hope you enjoy!**

* * *

 **5 Years Ago**

 _Chihiro sat in the backseat of the car, only half-listening to her parents marvel at the new city. She had briefly glanced up when the rural countryside had gradually shifted into the urban metropolis, but it had garnered much less interest from 10-year-old Chihiro than her eager parents._

 _Instead, Chihiro's attention was fixed upon a little card in her lap. It had been given to her as a gift, from two people: firstly, her friend from her old home. Secondly… Haku._

 _Chihiro suddenly cried out, hands clapping onto her forehead. Pain jabbed at her and lanced from everywhere, her head throbbing so violently that tears formed in her eyes._

" _Chihiro? What's wrong?" Her father's widened at her from the rearview mirror._

" _N-nothing," she managed to gasp, squeezing her hands into fists. "My head just hurts."_

" _We're almost at our new house," her mother said anxiously. "Our mattresses are already there, so you can get to rest as soon as we arrive."_

" _Mhm." Chihiro bit back a moan. It felt as if something was trying to claw out her mind and pushing it from all directions. She could feel something awful in her mind, as if it was invading her, picking out the pieces of her mind. But at last, the pain began to ebb, and then - as quickly as it had come - it disappeared, leaving only a light-headed feeling behind._

 _Chihiro breathed heavily, slowly lowering her hands. It seemed like it was over; but what had that been about?_

 _She stared down at her lap again and, after a while, picked up the card which her friend back at home had made for her. Her name blared out in orange crayon on the front, and she thought,_ Chihiro. My name is Chihiro _._

 _She did not know why those words felt so important to her, and she found that she didn't care to know anymore. She didn't want another headache to hit her unexpectedly._

 _Chihiro looked out of the window and at the buildings that seemed to touch the sky. She wondered when they had arrived in the city; her friend's card fluttered from her lap to the ground of the car as she shifted her position to get a better look outside._

 _She did not think of Haku anymore, after that moment. Even if some part of her mind was begging her, Chihiro did not remember to._

* * *

 **Any and all feedback so far would be much appreciated :)**


	2. A Forgotten Dream

**I changed up the order of the chapters because I think this works better and probably makes more sense!**

* * *

The night air was cool against Chihiro's skin.

She was sitting up on a wooden ledge jutting out from a tall, old-fashioned building, legs dangling off the side of the planks and arms crossed gently on a wooden bar. In front and above her, the night stars twinkled and stretched for miles into the distance; below her bare feet rippled a sparkling sea, its navy blue waters matching the silky darkness of the sky.

Chihiro felt at peace, sitting here in the night. In the distance - it seemed to be far away yet, at the same time, very close - she could see the lights of a small village. She did not know where it was, and yet it seemed familiar to her.

A shadow passed over her legs and she looked up, blinking. In the moonlight, she could see there was something in the sky, something long and thin weaving through the stars. When it passed in front of the moon, Chihiro gasped.

It was a dragon.

The dragon spotted her at the same time that she saw him, and for a moment, he didn't move and she couldn't breathe. Chihiro's heart beat faster. She felt strangely out of breath, and her cheeks were flushed with excitement for something that she wasn't sure about herself.

Suddenly, the silver dragon dove down. She should have felt fear at the great, large animal hurtling toward her, but instead she felt incandescently happy. She jumped to her feet and held her arms out, as if to embrace him. Her lips began to form a name, and her every nerve hummed with the thought of the name, the wind rustling her hair and the green on the dragon, the bright eyes sparkling in the night -

"Chihiro!"

Suddenly, everything, the village in the distance, the wood she was sitting on, the stars, and then the dragon, shimmered and shattered into a thousand pieces, a million shards of a world that never existed.

* * *

Seventeen-year-old Chihiro Ogino woke up with a start.

She surged up and off her pillows, blankets folding onto her lap as she breathed heavily and closed her eyes to stop the dizziness attacking her brain.

She had been dreaming again, _really_ dreaming. It had been one of those dreams that seemed so real that, as she sat on her bed, the blue walls of her room swimming into focus, Chihiro wondered whether it could have actually just been fake. Everything had felt so _real_ , so touchable. But… she couldn't quite remember what her dream had even been about. All she knew was that there had been stars, something beautiful and strong whirling in the sky - she racked her brain, trying to remember -

"Chihiro!"

Chihiro started as the door to her room opened, revealing her mother in an apron and with a disapproving look on her face. "You're going to be late," clucked Yuuka Ogino to her daughter. "And you've had already enough tardies to school. Hurry!"

She opened the door and left, leaving Chihiro to throw off her blankets and hastily put on her slippers. As Chihiro checked the clock, confirming that she would indeed be late to school if she didn't hurry up, her mind subconsciously drifted back to the dream she had had last night. Not that she remembered much from it, but she knew that it had been a great dream.

If only she could remember what it had been about.

Chihiro threw on her school uniform and shoved her books into her back. Standing in front of the mirror, she brushed her long brown hair and hissed at its refusal to stay straight. Reaching over to rummage through her hair clips and bands, Chihiro frowned until her fingers landed on her favorite band; a simple purple one that she had from when she was a kid.

After tying up her hair, Chihiro grabbed her bag and rushed out of the room. But even as she cursed herself for waking up so late, the serenity of the dream poked at her from the back of her mind. It seemed to be making fun at her for not remembering what had happened or why she knew that the dream had felt so _right_.

* * *

She was late to homeroom by two minutes. The homeroom teacher, Mr. Hayashi, was already taking role call by the time Chihiro slammed into the classroom, panting from her run from the bicycle racks to the room.

"Tardy again, Ogino?" Hayashi smiled as she apologized. "Two minutes is an improvement from five, so I'll let you go for today."

Chihiro grinned at him. "Thanks, Mr. Hayashi."

She made her way through the rows of seats until she reached the one beside her friend, Kagura, who immediately leaned over to whisper eagerly, "Did you hear? There's going to be a new student at our school soon. He's in our grade."

Chihiro pulled out her pencil case and asked curiously, "Are you sure? There's only a few months left of school before summer. And we'll be graduating by then."

Kagura shrugged, eyes sparkling. "I just heard it from Mizu."

"Oh, okay." If Mizu, the principal's son, said so, then it had to be true. But Chihiro was much less interested than Kagura, and the rest of the homeroom students, was in the new student. Her mind was still occupied by the memory of her dream that moment - rather, the memory of having the dream.

Last night was not the first time that she had had a perfectly wonderful dream, then forgotten about it. Chihiro couldn't count the times that this had happened, that she had woken up in the morning feeling more at peace than she could describe, and then spending the rest of the day in frustration because she could not figure out _why_. What made it worse was that recently, these types of dreams were getting more and more frequent - which meant that Chihiro herself was getting more and more frustrated during the days.

All she wanted to know was what she was dreaming about. Was that too much to ask from herself?

"Chihiro. Are you even listening to me?" Kagura demanded.

Chihiro jolted. "What?"

"Tch." Kagura leaned back in her seat and shook her head. "You get distracted so easily. What happened? You have this faraway look in your eye." Her friend suddenly perked up. "Is it a boy?"

Silver. For a moment, Chihiro saw silver, a bright flash in her eyes before it went away. She blinked, as if it would resurface if she opened and closed her eyes, but all she received was an expectant look from Kagura. Something silver… What was that about?

Shaking her head, Chihiro remembered to reply to Kagura. "Of course not. I'm just tired."

"Really." Kagura did not sound convinced. "Well, alright. But are you sure you're okay? You're sketching creepy things again."

Sometime in her thinking, Chihiro must have picked up a pencil, because when she looked down at her desk where Kagura was gesturing toward, she saw that she had been idly doodling something on her notebook. It looked like… three stone heads stacked on top of one another.

Chihiro squinted at them and frowned. She hadn't exactly been planning to decorate her notebook with yet another odd doodle, but the heads didn't look so bad. Her fingers traced the other drawings on the notebook cover: a small frog, a spiky-looking ball with eyes, and a curved bridge. Though they were all of random subjects, Chihiro liked the look of all of them together. They seemed to fit nicely on the same page, like pieces of a puzzle that hadn't been assembled yet.

"I'm fine," she said. "And you don't like the heads?"

Kagura raised an eyebrow. "Other than the fact that they are completely creepy?" She ducked out of the way as Chihiro made to playfully slap her arm. "By the way, are you free later this evening? Rin wants to see a movie."

"Maybe," said Chihiro. "My parents are going away tonight and for the weekend. Some business trip they have."

"Well, text me later. We haven't done anything together for forever."

Chihiro hummed in agreement. Her eyes slowly drifted back down to her notebook, and she frowned as she stared at the penciled bridge. It looked ordinary, like any other curved bridge ever created in the world, except that there was an ethereal elegance to it, with its soft slope and the warm light that seemed to make it glow. She wondered when she had even drawn it.

Sighing, Chihiro tore her eyes away from her drawing and pulled out her unfinished math homework. At least, she thought, she wasn't going to forget to do _that_.

* * *

It turned out that the students at Nakamura High did not need to wait long to find out who the promised new student was; he appeared at lunch time, schedule in hand and the center of attention, when everyone noticed him.

And everybody - girls especially - noticed him.

Chihiro, who had been working in the library all throughout lunch and missed the entire spectacle, was told that the boy was unnaturally, beautifully handsome, in not the rugged way but the elegant one. He wasn't outright and spoke with deliberation, yet he apparently had immediately been welcomed by several groups first attracted by his looks, then intrigued by his personality. His name was Sota Miyagi.

Rin and Kagura filled Chihiro in on the tiny details in science class. "He said that he was from the north," said Rin excitedly. "But he had this accent, and it didn't sound like anything I've heard before."

"Why isn't he in our class?" Chihiro asked, craning her head to look at the students in the room. No handsome Sota Miyagi was present. "Aren't all of us seniors in here?"

Kagura shrugged. "He might have some scheduling differences."

Chihiro groaned. Since this was their last class for today, it seemed unlikely that she would be able to see the new student until next Monday. She had to admit, her interest in him piqued the more that he was spoken about.

By the end of the day, her interest in Miyagi was high at high competition with the still-present thoughts about her dream that morning in her mind. Science had been all lectures, which meant that Chihiro had had plenty of time to ponder over both. It came to the point where, when the bell rang, Chihiro shot out of her seat and practically ran from the classroom, hoping that fresh air and movement might distract her from her musings.

She was one of the first to reach the bicycle racks, and kneeled down to undo the lock. Her breathing was fast and she felt strangely relieved when the lock unfastened and she pulled her bike off the rack, prepared to go home.

And that was when Chihiro noticed the boy.

She knew without a doubt that this was Sota, partly because Rin and Kagura had been meticulously thorough in their physical description of him, and partly because he had the air of someone who had been thrust into a new environment.

But Chihiro did not understand was why he was standing in front of her. At first she thought he might be waiting for her to move, so he could grab his own bike, but when his dark brown eyes met hers, she had the instinctual feeling that he'd been waiting for her.

"Hi," she offered slowly, shifting her hold on her bicycle. "You're the new student, aren't you?"

The boy nodded. "I am Sota."

Rin was right, Chihiro thought. He had a certain accent which she couldn't place, but definitely wasn't overly familiar or common. "I'm Chihiro," she said, holding out a hand.

Sota seemed to hesitate for a moment, his brown eyes flicking from her hand to her face before he cautiously put out his own hand. Her fingers grasped it, and she was surprised to feel the tough calluses on his palm that contradicted his otherwise elegant features. She noticed that he smelled like fresh, like summer leaves.

"How was your first day here?" she asked awkwardly.

The boy's eyes seemed to search every inch of her face, and Chihiro's heart fluttered. "More satisfying than I could have hoped."

She smiled. "That's good."

For a moment, neither said anything. Chihiro noticed a few students staring their way; Rin and Kagura were watching her with open jaws, but Sota didn't seem to notice. He just ran a hand through his dark brown hair and said slowly, "Goodbye, then. I will see you."

"Yes, of course. See you on Monday!" Smiling, Chihiro swung a leg over her bicycle and waved. As she fastened her helmet on, she thought she could still feel Sota's eyes on her. For some reason, she couldn't forget the feeling of his hand in hers, the firm grip his long fingers had had, the coolness of his skin.

She thought of these things on the whole ride home. For the first time that day, the dream from last night seemed nothing more than that - a dream, compared to the novelty and reality of Sota Miyagi.

She was soon to find out how very wrong she was.

* * *

Sota Miyagi watched Chihiro Ogino as she sped away, brown hair swishing as she rode on her human-made contraption. In the nearby distance, some stink-smelling humans were talking to him, but his focus remained on the human girl on her cycle.

He hadn't been there, five years ago, when a human had infiltrated the bathhouse and created all kinds of chaos there, but he had heard enough stories so that he might as well have been there after all. It was strange, he thought, that this ordinary human could be the same little girl of the stories, the same girl that Lady Zeniba often spoke about with fondness.

He lifted a hand to cover his face, half because the smell of humans was making him woozy and also because of the sun. The sun in the human world stung brighter than the one in the spirit world, and he could feel himself weakening where he stood. If he didn't get back to the forest soon, he knew that he would start shaking like a leaf.

As he strode off the human school's yard, Sota's mind remained fixated on Chihiro Ogino. Lady Zeniba had told him that there might be something off about Chihiro - five years was a long time - but she had been certain, at least, that the human would be able to sense his spirit. She had lived among spirits for a couple of days, after all.

But Chihiro hadn't seemed to be able to discern he was a spirit any more than the rest of the humans. In fact, she hadn't seemed to feel anything at all, not even when he met bare contact with her. And she had reeked of human. Pure human.

Sota shook his head. The Lady had only requested one job of him, and he would complete it regardless of Chihiro Ogino's smell or lacking sense of spirits.

Tomorrow, he would fetch Chihiro Ogino.

* * *

 **Look forward to the spirit world in the next chapter ;)**


	3. In Silver and Green

**Yay! The story is finally picking up :) I'm still so excited about this.**

* * *

The next morning, Chihiro woke up early to see her parents off.

"We'll be back Monday evening," said Yuuka, waving as she leaned out of the car window. "There's food in the refrigerator, and if you call Grandma, she'll have food for you too."

"Yes. Have fun!" said Chihiro blearily, leaning against the doorframe as her father backed out of the driveway. "I'll see you!"

When they had gone and Chihiro had gone back into the house, she found that she was too awake now to return to bed. Yawning, she poured cereal into a bowl and ate it dry, picking at the purple hair tie she had left on her wrist last night. She would go biking, she decided. There was a nice trail nearby that she liked to bike on; if she went now, she could be back by nine.

Ten minutes later, Chihiro was pedaling out of the city, head tilted toward the sky. She loved the feeling of the wind on her face; it felt like she was flying - not that she had ever flown before, on a plane or ever. But she liked to imagine that it was swift yet safe, cold yet somehow not lonely.

She plunged into the trees, following the trail carefully. It was easy to take the wrong paths in these woods, and (though she didn't remember it) her father claimed that they'd gotten lost in here the day they moved into the city. Thus, Chihiro was always cautious when biking in the woods. A wrong turn could go a long way in the wrong direction, and she had a specific path that she stayed on every time she came.

Except for today.

She was biking past an unpaved path between the trees when something caught her eye and she skidded to a stop, leaning back to get a better look down the path.

Chihiro gasped - there was a person down there, leaning against a hump of rock.

Heart thumping, she made to quickly pedal away before the person spotted her, but it figured that the person would turn before she could so much as press down on the pedal.

For a moment, they stared at each other. Chihiro couldn't make out the person's face from this far, but he was wearing green clothes that made him nearly blend into the background.

He stepped forward. "Ogino," he called, his voice carrying down the empty path.

Chihiro's mouth parted. She wondered if she ought to flee while he was still quite a long ways down the path.

"Ogino, it's me."

She squinted. The voice sounded familiar, and she rethought her instinct to flee. Maybe she did know this person.

She swung her leg over the bike and took a step toward the boy. She could make out brown hair and that he was tall, but that was still it.

"Humans are terribly short-sighted, aren't they?"

And at last, Chihiro identified who it was. Yes, there was that elegant look to his face, the accent in his voice. "Sota Miyagi?" she asked in astonishment. "Is that you?"

"Yes. Finally." He pushed himself off the rock and she hesitantly moved forward. She had never been down this path before, and she also felt certain that she'd never _seen_ it, either.

"What are you doing here?"

He didn't miss a beat. "To find you."

Chihiro gulped at the casual way he spoke, and resolved to tell Kagura and Rin not to hang out around this boy too much. He was scaring her, with his calm and random appearance.

"Why? Were you searching for me?"

She was close enough so that she could see Sota smile. "Yes. I've been searching for a while, too. But today, you came to me."

Chihiro eyed him suspiciously. She had not come to him. She had been biking, then stopped by the sight of him in a random spot in this forest, and now stopped by his strange words.

He was clearly crazy.

"Lady Zeniba will be pleased," Sota said slowly, enunciating each word and watching her as he did. They were closer now, so that she could see the green in his eyes, the rosy flush of his cheeks that hadn't been there yesterday at school when she'd first met him. He sounded and looked more… alive here, against the foliage of green around him.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said.

Sota paused, observing her. "You really don't remember? Not even a little bit?"

"Remember what?" His gaze was so intent now that Chihiro flinched when he stepped closer, an arm's breadth away from her. His eyes were startlingly green, she noticed. Like the leaves around him, the wall of vines behind him.

He frowned. "This will complicate things," he murmured, more to himself than to her. "It can't be avoided, though."

" _What_ can't be avoided?" Chihiro backed up. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Sota looked at her strangely, then shook his head. "I apologize, Chihiro Ogino."

Eyeing him warily, she demanded, "For?"

"For doing this, when clearly some part of you has been trying to stay away."

These were the last words that she heard before a cold wave rushed over her body and she fell to her knees. The woods spun in all directions around her, the trees as green as Sota's firm eyes, before the world faded to silver, then pitch black.

* * *

 _She was flying through the air, the night wind rushing past her as she held on tight. Miles below was the water that held the train tracks she'd been planning to walk back on. Chihiro closed her eyes. Up here in the sky, everything felt so_ right _. She did not want this moment to ever end._

 _Leaning forward, Chihiro breathed in the scent of the dragon she was riding upon. He smelled of freshness, like how she imagined light would smell like if it could have a scent. Her mouth opened to say his name, like how she had in all her dreams about the silver dragon - she remembered now that they'd always been of a silver and green dragon with beautiful hazy green eyes - and Chihiro clutched his light fur between her fingers._

" _Haku," she whispered to the stars._

 _And then the pain hit her body, and she was flying off of Haku into the empty air, plunging down to the water with nothing to stop her. Just falling, falling, falling._

* * *

Silver. Chihiro only saw silver even as her every bone seemed to have shattered and she throbbed all over from her head to her toes. Silver. She clung onto the color like it was a life vest saving her from drowning.

Gradually, she became aware that she was lying on something soft. For some reason, she thought it was fur, silver fur, but as soon as the thought crossed her mind, needles seemed to assail her brain. She cried out and rolled over, forcing her eyes open.

The ground was not silver, but green. It was a bed of springy green grass that waved in the gentle breeze. Chihiro's vision was dotted as she pushed herself up, but she could make out a beautiful blue sky adorned with white clouds like cotton candy.

As her surroundings slowly cleared, she wondered where she was. This wasn't the forest she'd been biking in, had it? Where was her bike, anyway? She tried to remember the last thing that had happened to her, but her head hurt so badly -

 _Sota._

Chihiro's eyes snapped open despite her body's protests. Sota Miyagi. What had he done to her? Where had he taken her? Her heart pounded wildly as she forced herself to get up. All she could see was grass, from all directions, and a river to her right. The river was filled with rocks, and as Chihiro stared at them, she suddenly remembered the feel of slippery rocks under her feet as she followed her parents across the river.

Another wave of pain hit her brain, and she almost sank to her knees in pain. As Chihiro looked between her drooping lids, she thought she could spot the top of a building over the hill on the other side of the river. When she dropped her hands from her face, she saw it was indeed a building structure.

She moved toward it without hesitation. Buildings meant people, and even though she couldn't recognize the building from here, surely there could be people there to help her, and at the very least, she could ask if they'd seen anyone like Sota around. She wondered where he'd went.

It was easy to move from rock to rock over the river, and she climbed up the hill easily. When she reached the crest, she paused, staring ahead with an open mouth.

There were traditional buildings lined up in the village up ahead, red lanterns hanging across each aisle. She couldn't see any people, but the place didn't look abandoned. It had a very warm feeling to it, and as Chihiro walked toward it, she felt strangely calm.

The streets were empty when she reached them. Chihiro walked through them cautiously, eyes taking in every building with astonishment.

"Hello?" she called out hesitantly. "Is anyone here?"

The only reply was the echo of her voice through the town. Biting her lip, Chihiro made her way to a staircase and ascended the steps. Maybe there'd be people up there.

There were no people, but there was a building, the most impressive yet, though still old-fashioned, like a shogun's house. It stretched across in different directions and rose into the sky. Near the back of the tall building were towers that reached up very high.

Chihiro stumbled toward the place, hoping there would be people inside. Surely such a big building kept in good condition would have _someone_ , just one person to tell her where this place was and how she could get back home. She mentally cursed herself for not bringing her phone with her that morning.

A loud _caw_ made her jump about a foot into the air. Chihiro spun to the side to see a small gray raven flapping in the sky. It watched her with its beady eyes, and as Chihiro looked up, lips parted, it gave another loud caw then darted upward into the sky.

She followed its path with her eyes until it disappeared around one of the high towers, and then she returned her attention to the building. To reach it, she would have to cross a little curved bridge.

The bridge. Chihiro gasped as she stared at the bridge connecting this side of the village to the large building. It was _her_ bridge, she thought in astonishment. It was the very same bridge that she'd drawn on her school notebook - she was certain! The elegant slope, the golden planks, every bit of it was the same. Her head spun and she reached out to grasp the side of the bridge -

But she never felt it.

Chihiro looked down and screamed. Her hand was not on the side of the bridge - it was in it, hovering between the wooden bar. And she could see _through_ her hand, see the glistening water beneath it. She quickly raised her other arm and saw that it, too, was turning translucent.

Fear pounded through her veins, and Chihiro looked to the house desperately. She forced herself to swallow her fear and ran toward it.

 _If only I had food_ , she thought desperately, unexplainably.

Chihiro fought back a whimper as she finished crossing the bridge and stood on the doorstep of the building. Her skin prickled as she stared at the red doors. Where had Sato brought here, and where was he now? What was happening to her?

She shakily reached up and lifted the knocker. It landed back on the door with a bang that evened to echo throughout the empty village.

Leaning against the side of the door, Chihiro waited. Her head was spinning again, and she felt drowsy, nearly drunk with dizziness.

That was when the door opened, and she was met with the sight of a large frog. For a moment, they both stared at each other, Chihiro helplessly and the frog with both surprise and disgust.

"Please," Chihiro whispered after a stunned moment.

The frog continued to stare at her as she held out her hand, almost as clear as glass.

And then the frog opened his mouth and screamed a word that made the throbbing in her head explode, filling her vision with black and making her knees give out as she collapsed to the ground.

"Human!"

For the second time, Chihiro fainted, the frog's familiar, shrill voice ringing in her ears as the house in her hazy vision seemed to burst alive with more frogs, maids, and a boy with eyes the color of spring.

* * *

 **Oho... who exactly is that boy? Sota Miyagi, the person who has for some reason brought her back into the spirit world? Or Haku, whom Chihiro's mind prevents her from remembering? Does Haku even remember Chihiro?**

 **Find out in the next chapter ;)**


End file.
